Monday, July 3, 2017

Time To Rescind Unconstitutional ‘Dreamers’ Amnesty

It’s now been five years since President Obama’s extraconstitutional June 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) amnesty — which he repeatedly insisted he had no authority to grant until he did so anyway.

Donald Trump vowed on the campaign trail last year, as part of his promise to get tough on illegal immigration, that he would rescind DACA. As such, it’s both disappointing and disturbing that President Trump has not only not made good on the promise, his secretary of homeland security recently signaled that he has no intention of doing so.

That failure to end DACA was made all the more puzzling when Homeland Security chief John F. Kelly did rescind a follow-on 2014 Obama executive action earlier this month that had sought to shield millions of illegal-immigrant parents of anchor babies and others from deportation as well.

Unlike DACA, the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) had never taken effect because a coalition of 26 state attorneys general fought it all the way to the Supreme Court. On June 23, 2016, the justices let an appeals court’s injunction against DAPA stand.

If only for the salutary sake of restoring the rule of law, if not for ending one of the foremost magnets drawing illegal immigrants across our southern border, the president must rescind Mr. Obama’s illegal DACA amnesty.

Mr. Trump could do so with his pen and his phone just as easily as his predecessor had initiated it.